FictionNovel

Niels Fredrik Dahl

Mother by Night
Mor om natten

Oktober Forlag 2017
225 Pages
English sample translation available

I was certain I would one day tell my father’s story; the one of his cold and adventurous childhood. But that’s not what happened. The story I thought was mine, in fact was not. The story I rejected, turned out to be.

Several years after his mother’s death, he finally opens her journal. The one she kept when he was a child. She called it her night book, and passed it on to him in her old age. Do whatever you want with it, she said, read it or don’t bother. He reluctantly accepted it. He had long before shut her out of his world.Mother by Night is a portrait of a woman, and a deeply personal novel about two people who live a life together without ever getting to know one another. Niels Fredrik Dahl explores depression, inheritance and loneliness in this brilliant depiction of childhood, family, and addiction. But Mother by Night is also a tale of love. Love shattered, and put back together.

“Increasingly often, novels take us into to the very core of relationships, whether pure fiction or on the semi-biographical field. A reader may think that there must soon hardly exist more takes on the subject. Then along comes Niels Fredrik Dahl and makes it gleam as if it was utterly new.”

NRK P2

“Wise and moving (…) Niels Fredrik Dahl has written a raw yet beautiful story about an author and his mother.”

Dagbladet

Photo: Baard Henriksen

Niels Fredrik Dahl (b. 1957). A Norwegian novelist, lyricist and dramatist. Niels Fredrik Dahl was awarded the Brage Prize in 2002 for Visiting a Friend (2202). He has also written scripts for TV series.